In a recent interview with the folks at Piano & Coffee, pianist and composer Garreth Broke spoke about growing up on a diary farm in West Wales where he forged a strong connection to the landscape and developed an acute awareness of how much changes are wrought over it with each season. That experience served as a large part of the inspiration for a quartet of EPs he would create with his artist partner Anna Salzmann, each of which would mark the beginning of a new season. The series comes to a conclusion next week with the release of June which features three compositions by Broke and vivid new imagery by Salzmann that is aflame with bright, warm colors.
Featured here in an exclusive premiere is the video created for the song ‘The Last’, a lovely minor key waltz in which Salzmann’s artwork takes a journey in light through the course of day into night.
The EP also includes “Take Flight”, a genuinely uplifting piece which gets its wings from the addition of organ and a woodwind quintet, and “Making something from nothing on a random evening in Dobrota in June”, an improvisation built around three piano chords accompanied by the humid buzz of cicadas and a sultry combo of double bass & trumpet. The jazz-inflected turn of this closing piece shows us yet again how easily Broke can shift moods & motifs while it ends the series on a note of warmth, hope, and camaraderie. A pleasant journey comes to an end, but just as with the seasons themselves, perhaps the ending is also the beginning of something new…
June will be available starting on June 30 via 1631 Recordings where all the Eps in the series can be found.
Links: June EP | Garreth Broke | Anna Salzmann 
Stationary Travels 